Month: August 2008

Our collective failure to find any reference in the Gulag Archipelago similar to the cross-in-the-dirt story is now confirmed. Chuck Colson’s version of the story is based on a myth. But a very effective one.

A reader writes:

I have to say, over the years I have greatly appreciated your ability to go after a story like a dog goes after a bone, but the ‘cross in the dirt’ controversy is baffling.

To put it bluntly, your fevered speculation smells like the "was Obama at TUCC when Rev. Wright said ‘God Damn America" pseudo-controversy, with the added bonus that there is no real way the controversy could be resolved. It is petty and small and tedious.

No: the issue is not proving a negative about someone’s entire lifetime. It’s scrutinizing a campaign ad and a campaign staple based on a story first told by Mark Salter in 1999. Asking questions about that story, exploring inconsistencies and provenance is totally legitimate. I don’t doubt, as I’ve said all along, that McCain had an uplifting experience at the hands of a kind guard in Vietnam. He told us so in 1973. What I am querying is the evolution of this experience into a religious epiphany identical to powerful evangelical tropes. I’m querying why a sandal becomes a stick; and why a minor event becomes a life-changing one, which, in its latest iteration, McCain says made him for the only time in captivity forget the war entirely, and forgive his enemies. I’m querying not just the fallibility of memory, but the compromises of power. Chasing these leads down for a couple of days is what a blog is for.

Worth noting: the money McCain is spending in swing states is in television advertizing, not ground-game investment.

La Pointe, Wisconsin, 10 am.

Not everyone is sold on a condom applicator that uses "a hard plastic tube with nozzles that spray liquid latex from all directions, much like the water jets in the tunnel of a car wash." Can’t imagine why.

Here’s a revealing passage from his speech to the VFW Convention:

This [beginning the surge] was back when supporting America’s efforts in Iraq entailed serious political risk. It was a clarifying moment. It was a moment when political self-interest and the national interest parted ways. For my part, with so much in the balance, it was an easy call. As I said at the time, I would rather lose an election than lose a war.

The clear implication is that someone who disagreed with McCain early last year could not have had a genuine reason to doubt that the surge would work and therefore could not have had a different view of the national interest. For McCain, it seems, everyone who disagreed with him was pursuing an unpatrotic selfishness – and only he was noble enough to "put country first." Good For Obama for challenging this today:

I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Over to McCain, right?

Brendan Nyhan observes:

While I obviously have normative concerns about misleading campaign attacks, it’s much less clear that the LBJ ad had "crushing smear power," that the Swift Boat ads "severely undercut" John Kerry, or that Michael Dukakis lost his 17-point lead in the polls as a result of the Willie Horton ad. The leading models of presidential elections predicted that Goldwater, Kerry, and Dukakis would lose. Journalists tend to construct post hoc narratives after the fact about election outcomes that tend to rely on dramatic visuals from debates and campaign ads rather than the fundamentals (the state of the economy, presidential approval, war casualties, etc.)

"Obviously, I favor Senator Obama’s energy positions, and Democrats have been by and large the more forward-leaning actors. But John McCain has the best record of any Republican running for president on the energy issue and on climate change," – Bill Clinton. Obviously?

The former veep will speak on the convention’s final night. That should get the partisan juices flowing.

Ugh. McCain invited accusations of elitism by calling Obama an arugula-loving, berry-tea-drinking, Starbucks-swilling, elite liberal know-nothing. But watching the left attack McCain for having multiple houses and $520 shoes is not exactly uplifting either.